Reddit reviews The Dressmaker's Handbook of Couture Sewing Techniques: Essential Step-by-Step Techniques for Professional Results

This is gorgeous!

I grabbed links a couple of books you might be interested in, if you haven't found them already.

adapting/altering sewing patterns and couture finishing techniques

I found them when I decided to challenge my sewing skills. I really enjoy them both.

I personally don't think you are too old.

I used to sew for fun when I was 16, stopped after leaving school and began again at the age of 23/24. I have been steadily re-learning all of the techniques I was taught at school, and have been attending college courses on sewing and dressmaking too. I am now at the stage where I am working on my own project portfolio, but will happily admit that I am still learning lots of new things.

I will agree with /u/heliotropedit though. you do have to be completely 100% dedicated to learning everything you can.

You will end up spending hours and hours practicing the same techniques over and over again. You will want to quit at times and need to motivate yourself to carry on and push through to the end. You'll want to cry on occasions at how tired you are and how you feel that your work simply isn't good enough and how it never will be. You will see other people wearing beautifully crafted garments and feel angry at your own lack of skills. but when you finally break through and create a perfectly drafted and constructed garment, you will realise all of that time, pain, upset and sheer panic will have been 100% worth it.

But before you ever reach this point, you need to be completely certain that it is what you want to do, the tailoring profession is very difficult to break into and it takes true dedication and sacrifice and time (years) to make it.

NB a few good books to help:- (the first three books are good for beginners, the last 4 books are aimed at the more intermediate level sewers)

Easy Does It Dressmaking

The Sewing Book

The Dressmakers Handbook

Couture Sewing Techniques as recommended to me by /u/heliotropedit.

Couture Sewing: Tailoring Techniques

Classic Tailoring Techniques: Menswear

Classic Tailoring Techniques: Womenswear

I've been getting a lot of use out of Making Trousers, Shirtmaking Techniques, and the Dressmaker's Handbook lately. The first two have more instructions/advice about actually constructing the garments, while the handbook is basically just a bunch of useful little tricks with good explanations and color photos. The techniques are useful for projects other than dresses, despite the book's name.

(Maybe a sewit sewalong is in order? I'm sure there are more people who want to learn to tailor.)